At a Glance...

The Ramayana belongs
to a class of literature known in Sanskrit as kavya (poetry), though
in the West it is considered to belong to the category of literature familiar
to readers of Homer, namely the epic. It is one of two epics, the other
being the Mahabharata, which have had a decisive influence in shaping
the nature of Indian civilization. The Ramayana existed in the oral tradition
perhaps as far back as 1,500 BCE, but the fourth century BCE is generally
accepted as the date of its composition in Sanskrit by Valmiki. Though
some right-wing ideologues in recent years, eager that the Ramayana should
have the same kind of historicity attached to it as do the scriptures
of Christianity and the Koran, have sought to date the Ramayana
back to at least 6,000 years and even furnish an exact date for its composition,
it by no means diminishes the importance of the text to suggest that the
historicity of the Ramayana is the least interesting of the questions
that can be raised about it and its characters. Whether in fact its hero
Rama, who in Hindu mythology is an avatar of Vishnu but a principal
deity in his own right, and who is also worshipped in parts of north India
as a king, existed or not is scarcely of any importance. The other kind
of excess is to view him merely as a trope  as a sign of patriarchy,
for example, or as an insignia of valiant and militant kshatriyahood,
which is what the present generation of Hindutvavadis have turned him
into.

The main frame
of the story of the Ramayana is exceedingly well-known in India, imbibed
by every Indian with, so to speak, mothers milk. The Koysala country,
with Ayodhya as its capital, is presided over by Dasaratha. Though his
eldest son Rama, son of his queen Kausalya, is entitled to the throne,
and Dasaratha is himself keen that Rama should ascend to the kingship,
Dasarathas other queen Kaikeyi contrives to have Rama sent into
exile for fourteen years, as well as have her own son, Bharatha, installed
as king. Though Bharatha is not a party to the plot, and is devoted to
his elder brother, Rama nonetheless proceeds to the forest, accompanied
by his brother Lakshmana, who is one of two sons of Dasarathas third
queen, Sumithra, as well as by his wife, Sita, renowned for her beauty
and matchless virtue. In the forest, Rama and his party have numerous
adventures, but it is the abduction of Sita by Ravana, the demon-king
of Lanka, which sets the stage for the epic battle between Rama and Ravana.
In his efforts to find Sita, whose whereabouts are unknown, Rama is aided
by Hanuman, the monkey god or god of wind. In Indian literature and mythology,
there is no greater exemplar of the perfect devotee than Hanuman. Eventually,
Ravana, his kin, and his entire force is defeated by Rama and his military
allies, and in triumph Rama returns to Ayodhya with Lakshmana and Sita
and is crowned king.

It is important
to recognize that there is not one Ramayana in India. Indeed, the original
composition in Sanskrit by Valmiki is seldom read these days, and the
most common Ramayanas are in the vernacular Indian languages.
In south India, for instance, the Ramayana of Kamban, written in Tamil
in the eleventh century, prevails; in north India, the Ramayana of Tulsidas,
called the Ramacaritmanas, has become legendary. Even among the
Hindus living in far-flung places of the Indian diaspora, such as Fiji
and Trinidad, the Ramacaritmanas is the devotional text of Hinduism par
excellence. There are Ramayanas in virtually all the major Indian languages,
and a few dozen translations, mainly abridged, and "transcreations"
in English. In the Bengali version of the story, Ravana is turned into
the hero; and this narrative was again taken up by the nineteenth century
Bengali writer, Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824-73), whose own epic retelling
of the Ramayana portrays Rama as a weak and effeminate figure representing
an earlier stage of political naivete and parochialism. It is no surprise
that one American scholar, Paula Richman, has written of the "many
Ramayanas" in a book by the same title.

Though the main
story of the Ramayana may appear to be without much complexity, the epic
presents numerous problems of interpretation, as has already been suggested.
True, Rama appears in popular Indian representations (especially
in the north) as the very model of the monogamous husband and just and
good king; similarly, Sita has been seen as the supreme model of the virtuous,
self-sacrificing, and obedient wife, the supreme embodiment of femininity
as much as womanhood. But even a superficial reading of the Ramayana puts
this interpretation at some risk. One problem is that the Ramayana appears
in many versions, and the variant endings illustrate the nature of the
diverse readings. In the commonly accepted version of the story, after
Rama had rescued Sita and brought her back to Ayodhya, numerous rumors
arose about the questionable fidelity of Sita that had the effect of unsettling
Rama. Though Rama realized that his wife was the very paragon of virtue
untainted, and that she would not have submitted to the sexual advances
of Ravana, in whose captivity she had remained for many years, some doubts
began to creep into his own mind; besides, as a king, it was his duty
to put to rest the anxieties expressed by his subjects. Consequently,
he subjected Sita to a public test: if she could emerge from the flames
of the fire unscathed, that would be the touchstone of her unimpeachable
moral character. Sita passes the test (agnipariksha) with flying
colors, and henceforth takes her place besides Rama, and together they
preside over Ayodhya. In a variant ending, Sita is sent to pass the rest
of her life at the hermitage of Valmiki, where she gives birth to the
twins Lava and Kusa; and eventually, pleading with the earth, from which
she is descended, to be her witness, Sita [the word means "furrow"]
returns to the earth from where she had come forth. This can be seen as
a reprimand to Rama, as a reaffirmation of the feminine principle against
the masculinity of realpolitik. One recent and moving reinterpretation
of the Ramayana by Ramachandra Gandhi suggests that the portion about
the agnipariksha is not part of the story as it appeared in the
oral tradition, being added at the instance of patriarchal men who came
to exercise increasing influence in Indian society.

Even the character
of Rama is not without its blemishes [see Rama]. Contrariwise,
even Tulsidass Ramacaritmanas, which is the most patriarchal
of the widely read versions, recognizes that Ravana was not without
certain admirable qualities. Indeed, the tales about the Ramayana suggest
a wonderful self-reflexivity. When Rama agrees to go into exile, he attempts
to dissuade Sita from following him; she is advised that as a princess,
accustomed to all the luxuries that life has to offer, the hardships of
a meager and hard existence in the forest are not for her. But, as a Hindu
wife, Sita suggests that she will willingly share her husbands life,
and that at this critical moment she cannot abandon him. The Indian writer
Ananthamurthy has written about one version of the Ramayana, where Rama
pleads with Sita to remain behind in Ayodhya; finally, exasperated by
his presumption that women must not undergo the hardships of life, Sita
says to Rama: "If in all other Ramayanas I accompany you, how can
I not do so in this Ramayana."

THE TEXT: The Valmiki or Sanskrit Ramayana
contains nearly 50,000 lines of verse, and is much longer than both the
Iliad and the Odyssey. The narrative is broken up into seven books, as
follows:

Bala-kanda: the boyhood and adolescence of Rama;

Ayodhya-kanda: the court of Dasaratha, and the
scenes that set the stage for the unfolding of the story, including
the exchange between Dasaratha and Kaikeyi, and the exile of Rama;

Aranya-kanda: life in the forest and the abduction
of Sita by Ravana;

Kishkindhya-kanda: Ramas residence in Kishkindhya,
the quest for Sita, and the slaying of Bali;

Sundara-kanda: description of the landscapes over
which Rama roams, and the arrival of Rama and his allies in Lanka; sundara
means beautiful, and this portion of the book has passages of lyrical
beauty;

Yuddha-kanda, also known as the Lanka-kanda: the
book of war: the defeat of Ravana, the recovery of Sita, the return
to Ayodhya, and the coronation of Rama; and

Uttara-kanda: the "later section", detailing
Ramas life in Ayodhya, the banishment of Sita, the birth of Lava
and Kusa, the reconciliation of Rama and Sita, her death or return to
the earth, and Ramas ascent into heaven.

There are numerous
translations of the Ramayana available in English. One popular, but extremely
condensed, version  based on the Tamil of Kamban  is by R.
K. Narayan (Penguin Books); in India, just as popular is the version,
also in prose but longer, by C. Rajagopalachari (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan).
Another easily available abridged version in verse is by William Buck.
The most scholarly, and complete, English translation of the Ramayana,
is the multi-volume version by Robert Goldman, Sheldon Pollock, and others,
published by Princeton University Press.